CAPTCHA tests have been annoying many internet users for some time now, but one disabled Australian has finally had enough, starting a petition to encourage major companies to get rid of the tests. Wayne Hawkins is a blind resident of Sydney who is sick of having CAPTCHA tests prevent him from easily accessing the web, and is calling for it to be killed "once and for all".

Hawkins highlights how CAPTCHA tests are not only inaccessible for disabled citizens, but also frustrating for all internet users. They can't be read by screen-reading software by design, which prevents blind people from using their usual tools to fill out CAPTCHA-protected forms, the audio versions are often completely incomprehensible, and the words displayed are often ridiculous or illegible for sighted people.

I like the ones that ask a question or make you do a simple math problem. There are other ways to differentiate a human from a bot, things far more clever than what we have now. Last line in the article says:

Hawkins says that CAPTCHA tests "fundamentally fail to properly recognise people with disabilities as human".

Bit extreme wording, maybe, but the test is purportedly designed to only be passed by a human, so... heh.

It's funny with Captchas that use 2 words, one quite clear and one rather squiggly. Only one word is used for verification, the sguiggly one, the other word (usually the more legible one) is used to provide services to Ebooks digitizing scanned books.

Every time I am presented with one, I fill it out with swear words or racial insults, they get accepted no problem.

It's funny with Captchas that use 2 words, one quite clear and one rather squiggly. Only one word is used for verification, the sguiggly one, the other word (usually the more legible one) is used to provide services to Ebooks digitizing scanned books.

Every time I am presented with one, I fill it out with swear words or racial insults, they get accepted no problem.

It's funny with Captchas that use 2 words, one quite clear and one rather squiggly. Only one word is used for verification, the sguiggly one, the other word (usually the more legible one) is used to provide services to Ebooks digitizing scanned books.

Every time I am presented with one, I fill it out with swear words or racial insults, they get accepted no problem.

I do this too. Saw it on 4chan years ago. Any words with punctuation or capitalization = Ebook digitilizing.

Found the picture.. won't post as it uses the word, beginning with N, that rappers like to say, but if I say I would get in trouble.

I despise captchas too. As a web designer I've purposefully never implemented it on any site I've had a hand in.

There are better ways.

Such as? Alternate captcha systems aren't anywhere near as secure as their authors like to claim. In most cases, hackers can easily bypass the homebrew captcha many web developers like to invent. Google's reCAPTCHA requires very sophisticated algorithms to recognize the characters in the image. It's the best solution Google has to prevent fraudulent activity. It's a huge improvement over the days where several invalid logins would lock the account making it impossible to login, including for the owner of the account.

if deaf/blind people cannot hear or see on that captcha program over the internet. it is very hard for them to read it.

Even people with perfect sight and hearing have trouble understanding some of these stupid things, imagine what it's like for a disabled person. As was pointed out there are far better ways of doing these things. The squiggly distorted words on crazy backgrounds and mumbled gibberish audio captchas need to be abolished. I'm amazed that some people are actually defending them.

Such as? Alternate captcha systems aren't anywhere near as secure as their authors like to claim. In most cases, hackers can easily bypass the homebrew captcha many web developers like to invent. Google's reCAPTCHA requires very sophisticated algorithms to recognize the characters in the image. It's the best solution Google has to prevent fraudulent activity. It's a huge improvement over the days where several invalid logins would lock the account making it impossible to login, including for the owner of the account.

When a captcha is used it's to try to stop bots filling forms but it usually succeeds in stopping human users filling forms too. They're not easy to use and provide a road block to a lot of people. Bad Design and Dev 101 there. As mentioned some people find them basically impossible to get past easily.

This is why they should be removed from usage.

You can use a variety of techniques that are a lot more transparent or totally invisible to the user to try to detect bots. The common honeypot field or even measuring the time taken to complete a given form. Often a human isn't going to fill out a form in a second (auto-filling aside) but a bot can.